Good Work : Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition

I was leaving behind my home and my identity as an achiever, a safe refuge which had gotten me to this point but was no longer serving me.

Angie and I joked that in just a few months, we had already spent more time together than career-focused couples do in a whole year. This felt important: she took quality time seriously and was willing to sacrifice things like money in return for connection, adventure, and love.

This is why freelancing is often a useful, but temporary, first stop for people on unconventional paths. It involves work you are good at and perhaps even enjoy somewhat, but if you try to turn this work into a business or your new identity, you end up creating a job for yourself that includes everything you wanted to escape in the first place.

“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”⁠1 PARKER PALMER

Angie and I joked that in just a few months, we had already spent more time together than career-focused couples do in a whole year. This felt important: she took quality time seriously and was willing to sacrifice things like money in return for connection, adventure, and love.

As Cécile said, “I used to be scared to lose my job. I was worried I would not find anything else. I am not worried anymore. This experience has helped me shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.”

Perhaps you loved the initial path you embarked on, much like I enjoyed consulting in my first couple of years. If that fire has become a small flame, vow to yourself: I will not let this flame die.

But when you stop doing it, good work seduces you back. It is something you must do. Once you discover your good work, take it seriously and protect it, as it can be one of the most powerful ways to show up in the world, contribute, and feel useful.

So the only reasonable answer I can give to the question of “How can I do what you are doing?” is this: fully commit to the journey, challenges and all. Once you do, don’t give up. Keep going. Take the search for good work seriously.

“Good work and good education are achieved by visitation and then absence, appearance and disappearance. Most people who exhibit a mastery in a work or a subject have often left it completely for a long period in their lives only to return for another look. Constant busyness has no absence in it, no openness to the arrival of any new season, no bir